Extended Practise: Kingdom of Masks Scene 21 Improvements

 Extended Practise
Kingdom of Masks Scene 21 Improvements

• This week:
• I worked on the improved/redone Scene 21, after the feedback from last weekly session.
• What went well:
• We decided to redo Scene 21, as the sword still felt slightly wrong, even after making improvements. Khoa had also mentioned this was supposed to be an impactful scene, so we all agreed to make it better. Khoa sent me the rough, timed keyframes, so my job was to draw the clean lines on a new layer. I didn’t make any initial changes to the timing of the keys, as I assumed he wanted it to be timed that way.
• Here is the previous Scene 21:

• And here is the roughed keys Khoa sent to me:

• I cleaned these keys, paying attention to my line weights and making sure no frames seemed to wobble or any volumes changed size. In addition to this, I asked Khoa if he wanted me to key some VFX in the background. I agreed to fully animate cloud/smoke effects, as the sword is pulled out of the rocks. I started by keying this, after watching some inspiration they had sent. 
• One specific inspiration they referred to was the He-Man Opening lightning effect, as he pulls out his sword. I did the rest of the animation straight ahead. 

• To improve these VFX further I used Toon Booms' effects layers, which adds a blur and lightens the closest segment of cloud.

• After showing these in the weekly, the keys were then re-timed and updated by Khoa. Some feedback consisted of just making the movement faster, repeating some frames to make him struggle to pull the sword and a smear as the sword comes free. These are now ready for Amy to inbetween here:

Keyframes improved by Khoa

• What Could be Improved:
• Despite being further improved by Khoa, I think that I could have tried timing it myself as I was keyframing it. I assumed the keys needed to be specifically timed how the roughs were, so I followed them exactly. In the future, I will keep in mind maybe putting forward improvement ideas or asking the director if the timing needs to be followed exactly.
• The cloud effects seem to be a little bit fast and I think it could be something that gradually speeds up, rather than starting out fast straight away. I will wait for Amy to add the lightning effects before possibly updating these.
• Next week:
• I will be working more on my final film.